Astrophysical interpretation of small-scale neutrino angular correlation searches with IceCube

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to interpret IceCube neutrino angular correlation results in terms of astrophysical source models, providing limits on source distributions based on neutrino data.

Contribution

It presents a novel interpretation framework linking neutrino angular correlation analysis to astrophysical source models, especially for blazar-like sources.

Findings

Limits on source count distribution parameters derived from IceCube data.

Method demonstrates how to connect neutrino clustering results with astrophysical source models.

Applicable to various source populations beyond blazars.

Abstract

IceCube, a cubic-kilometer sized neutrino detector at the Geographic South Pole, has recently discovered a diffuse all-flavor flux of astrophysical neutrinos. However, the corresponding astrophysical sources have not yet been identified in current IceCube analyses. We present a method to interpret the results of a recently published angular correlation analysis in IceCube searching for spatial clustering of muon neutrino events in terms of astrophysical models (given by an arbitrary source count distribution). We exemplarily show the resulting limits on the parameters of a class of source count distributions motivated by Fermi-LAT observations of resolved blazars.